Returning the Favor
by Pokepika's Haunt
Summary: Sometimes... Help comes from unlikely places...and can lead to unlikely things... More inside; rated T for safety, Fem!Ichigo fanfic


A/N. This was one of a couple of overdue fanfics that weirn018 requested me to write and post, that I never got around to actually doing (Bad Pokepika BAD!) and then wound up forgetting about until just now…*bows head in complete and total shame* I am a pathetic excuse for a writer…Anyways I hope you guys enjoy the story, and my apologies to the wonderful weirn018 for taking so long in getting at least one of your requests written, up, and ready to read. Now mind you this is my first ever crossover so please be gentle in your reviews, I already have a low self-esteem, I'm not sure if it could take the blow if somebody outright burned me for doing a bad job with this.

REQUEST: Simply a bleach/pokémon crossover where Ichigo is saved by either the Dragon/Ghost-type Giratina or the Dark-type Darkrai.

Summary: Sometimes…Help can come from the most unlikely of places…

A horrible storm results in the unexpected meeting of a lifetime with young Ichigo Kurosaki is saved by a mysterious pokémon cloaked in darkness. Years later, and now fourteen years in age, she joins the Ranger Academy in order to help those who saved her when she was little. But evil brews in the horizon as an evil organization hell-bent on turning pokémon into their slaves plots behind the scenes. Can Ichigo, alongside her new friends, save the pokémon, as well as the whole world?

**Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING!**

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**Of Rain and Safe Shadows!**

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Rain beat down from the heavens, drowning the world below into a dangerous whirlwind of near hurricane level winds and flashing bouts of lightning and thunder. The whole world seemed to cave in overhead, screaming in rage and frustration, all hordes of negative feelings as the storm forged onward without even a hint that it would stop anytime soon.

Crying, lost, alone, and horribly frightened, a young girl, barely four years in age, walked through the torrential downpour, looking for wherever home had gone, her desperate calls lost within the howling winds as she began to shiver under the threat of hypothermia. Unruly, strawberry blonde hair clung uncomfortably to her neck and shoulders as she carefully made her way across a somewhat familiar river, raging dangerously fifteen meters below her, though that distance was decreasing the higher the water level rose. It didn't matter as long as she found her way back home, wherever that was. The accursed forest could be so confusing sometimes.

'_Mama told me NOT to go into the forest alone…She said bad things happened to those who go into the forest…This is bad…Ichi should've listened to Mama…' _The young girl thought as she continued the slow trek across the slippery, felled tree trunk that served as a make-shift bridge over the wide gape the river had made through the bedrock over the ages. Suddenly, there was a sickening crack sound…Something was giving, and then the next thing the young four year old knew, was the heart-stopping decent into rushing water.

Yellow eyes, rimmed with blue and that by red, a shadowed body and white flowing hair; That was the last thing the strawberry blond four year old saw before total darkness encompassed her, the small child being swallowed by the murky, raging depths of a river that had decided to take a life that day…

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The morning sun was warm, the exact opposite of the drastic, traumatizing night before, and a young four year old with strawberry blond hair woke up to the warmth of a very familiar bed.

"Ichigo! You awake, it's morning already, time for breakfast." A familiar voice called, causing the young four year old to rollover to the door of her bedroom. She was home? She was safe? The river, so angry, so mad, hadn't eaten her? _It was all just a bad dream? _

Carefully climbing out of the bed, her bare feet landed on the sopping pile of still-wet clothes lying in the middle of her floor. The clothes she had been wearing in her dream to be exact, covered in mud, and drenched all the way through. _'It hadn't been a dream…Then who saved me?'_

"Ichigo!" the child looked up to the door at the sound of her name being called, the sight of her mother there to greet her, an exasperated smile decorating her always pretty features as she leaned against the doorframe elegantly. The woman chuckled a little, bending down slightly so that she was at least partially eye-level with her four year old daughter. "It's time for breakfast, come on! We're serving you're favorite today." The woman called cheerily, holding her arms out so her daughter, expression bright as always despite what had happened the night before, which the little girl was sure the woman, her mother, didn't know about, could run up to her and give the woman a hug.

"Hey Mama?"

"Yes sweetie?"

"What's something that can help a pokémon?"

"Hm? Well that's an odd question…Let's see…well there's nurses and doctors for pokémon, like Nurse Joy…There's Pokémon Rangers…"

"What are Pokémon Rangers?"

"They're people who go out into the field and do their best to help pokémon and people alike. Why?"

"I think I know what I want to be when I grow up."

"Oh? And what's that?"

"I'm gonna be a Pokémon Ranger!"

Never had the woman, in the four years her daughter had been alive, ever seen that child with such a determined looking on her face. The woman couldn't help but smile at the thought,

"You'll be the best Pokémon Ranger out there, I can tell!"

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A/N. Hope you guys enjoyed this. Please review and tell me what you think! Thanks for reading and see ya!


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